Re: Adding a second floppy drive to an Apple IIe

[Linards Ticmanis <ticmanis@gmx.de>]

On 04/28/2011 05:06 AM, Jeff Shanholtz wrote:
> Newly back into this hobby after dusting off my old Apple IIe and
> starting to get some software transferred over with ADTPro. I only had
> a single floppy drive but recently came across a few drives that I
> decided to try with my apple. I suspect that each one has a problem
> because none of them seem to work as expected (one causes drive 1 to
> spin but not boot, one causes drive 1 not to boot at all - immediately
> goes to a command prompt, and one seemingly works but crashed ADTPro).
> 
> So I just want to confirm that there is no configuration I need to do
> when adding a second drive, right? Just plug and boot? I don't see any
> jumpers or anything.

If you're using the old style Disk II drives which plug into the
controller card separately via 20 wite ribbon cables - before turning on
the power you have to make absolutely sure the plug is connected to the
card correctly, i.e. not moved a hole to the left or to the right so
that two pins don't enter the plug, or reversed so that the cable goes
towards the card instead of away from it, or sitting only on the front
row of pins. Otherwise it might indeed stop both drives from working,
even permanently if you're so "lucky". (For the newer drives with
daisy-chaining and a 19-pin SUB-D plug there isn't really much you can
do wrong, except inserting or removing plugs while the power is turned on.)

If that doesn't help, try replacing the 74LS125 (IIRC, but it's the only
74xx chip) on the analog board inside the drive. That one tends to burn
out very easily when a somebody plugs it in the wrong way, which might
have happened to the previous owner. Usually the other chips and the
controller cards survive undamaged.

-- 
Linards Ticmanis